When you’re teaching your students, you want to have a great opener and do some good Bible study. You may want to have some great illustrations, graphics, and questions.

But what about what you want students to take away from the teaching time? I’ve had students tell me they remember the story I told or the joke I butchered. But what I really want them to do is have their lives changed.

So what about the application?

Actionable

The first thing we need to do is make sure that students can actually take action on what we’re teaching them. If we’re doing a lesson on faith and we tell students to have more faith, what do we want them to do? It’s hard to measure if someone had more faith this week than they did the week before.

Something that is actionable is something that a student can do. When you’re planning your application section, ask yourself if a student could know with certainty that they had tried to put the lesson to the test.

For example, if your lesson is on prayer, then you could ask students to pray one time a day. You don’t have to tell them to pray for a certain amount of time or about a certain topic, but if they spend any amount of their day praying every day for a week, they’ll know that they put your lesson to the test.

Memorable

The second thing you want to do is make sure that students can remember to do what you’ve asked them to do. There are different ways you could do this. You could send them a text later on and ask them how they’re doing with the application. You could have them write it down on an index card and tape it to their bathroom mirror. You could give them something that you want them to carry around for a week that will remind them of the application.

Whatever it is, make sure students can remember the application. Whether you give them something, ask them to write it down, or send them a text, make sure the application is memorable!

Check in next week

The biggest part of all this is checking in with them a week after you teach. I know most of the time we think that the lesson is over, so we’re done and can move on to next week. But what if we spent some of our teaching time checking in on how things went the week before?

This might actually be a great time to involve small group leaders so that they can follow up with students as well. This is a great check on your application. If a small group leader asked a student whether or not they put your lesson to work, would the student know for sure whether or not they did?

We want to be creative in our teaching and have students study the Bible! We know that the Holy Spirit is involved and active in changing their lives. But when it comes to application, we want to help students as best we can. And the best way we can do that is to make sure the application we challenge them with is actionable, memorable, and something we can check in with them on.

Is there anything that I missed? I’d love to know!